


Hope

by NimueOfTheNorth



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 12:44:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18282620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NimueOfTheNorth/pseuds/NimueOfTheNorth
Summary: Atlantis has been lonely and adrift in her own mind for the longest time, but her new people bring about change.





	Hope

**Author's Note:**

> This ties into "Potential", a series I started on Rough Trade. Episode 1 is available in my 2018 EAD offerings, the rest is still to come. This is just an interlude and should work just fine on its own, if a little teasing.

_(Picture Prompt by Keira Marcos)_

 

 

She was so very confused. Adrift in her own mind. She knew she’d been like this for a very long time, but she couldn’t tell how long exactly. She’d been lonely and in the dark.

The Ancients had made her like this on purpose when they left. Too arrogant to delete information that could be equal parts dangerous and useful. Too selfish to think of anything but their own safety, indifferent to her ability to function beyond instinct and automatic responses.

In her clearer moments, when she could pull a few thoughts together, she had to admit that it had probably made the loneliness of her slumber easier to bear.

In those same moments, she resented them for putting nothing in place to help put order back into the chaos. She remembered their ambitions to reach a new plane of existence, from where they might never return to the reality she existed on, let alone the bottom of the ocean they’d stashed her away on. They should have given her a chance to regain herself or for others to help her.

And there were others.

After aeons that she’d only had her tangled and foggy dreams for company, her gate had finally been woken up again. A dial-in from the one address not blocked in her databanks had opened up the blast of vital energy inside of her and ended her loneliness.

She’d greeted the flurry of activity with as much welcome as she could muster dazed and starving as she was. In a desperate lurch to protect those that came for her, she’d found the right thread of her programming to pull and bring them all up to the surface again, back into the light and the air and warmth that would allow her new people to live.

And how much life they’d brought with them. Such a sense of adventure and exploration, curiosity and passion. She wasn’t sure the Ancients had ever been like this. She soaked it all up and clung to it, supporting it wherever she could.

There were even those among her new people that could connect to her the same way as the Ancients could, and they became a balm to her lonely soul, an anchor to her confused mind. They even found a way to give more of them that ability and every single one of those connections, however small, bloomed in her mind and gave her something to hold on to. It worked best when someone with the genetic legacy of the Ancients sat down in the control chair. The connection was stronger, and she felt more alive and herself in these moments. 

She fell in love almost instantaneously, and the best thing was, they loved her back. Even those that couldn’t feel her treated her with care and did their best to repair the damage done to her by time and the ocean.

It was difficult to protect them from the dangers the Ancients had left lingering in so many spots all over her towers, and she mourned every one of her new inhabitants that suffered due to her inabilities. That’s how she learned that their alluring curiosity could also be a menace. 

It also brought them face to face with the old enemy all too soon. But where the Ancients had hidden from the threat and eventually run, her new people were spirited fighters with a great sense of responsibility. They made new enemies as well, and both old and new enemies brought the fight to her, but she’d take the pain of additional damage over the pain of loneliness any day.

And for the first time in her considerable memory, she had people who fought  _ for _ her, in her defence just as much as in their own, and that made all the difference.

It also made it all the worse that she could do so little to help them, to give them the information to help themselves and her. They poked and prodded her databases but couldn’t make any more sense of them than she could. It was frustrating and disconcerting, being trapped adrift in her own mind like that. She had been programmed to support those that dwelled inside her walls and the chaos the Ancients left behind prevented her from fulfilling that purpose.

But now, there was somebody new. Actually, there had been many new people populating her structures ever since her favourite had taken them all on a trip back to the Milky Way, but not all of them had become new residents. This one settled in to stay and she soon noticed that the majority of his focus was directed at her databases and the lack of order. Many of the brilliant minds among her new people had tried already but his approach was different, and it felt good. Her new people had learned a lot about her since they arrived and had used that knowledge well. But he more than any before him understood her mind, better even than she herself did since the chaos.

It gave her hope.

__  
  



End file.
